TERRA (The Elements Series Book 2)

by Tracy Korn

  "We have to let the fire thaw us out before anything can really soak in from back there, wise? We just have to let the fire work," Dell says as the flames grow and the wood in the little fire pit begins to pop and smoke, the latter quickly wafting toward the opening in the tree and twirling into a little cyclone on its way out.

  I feel Myra before I hear her…the scream out of the void pushing up through my chest, but dismantling itself before it reaches my lips—Myra's lips, which open and close like a fish out of water as her boots scuff at the ground.

  "Myra…Myra," I say, leaning forward into Arco's forearms until he releases me. I drop to my knees and try to block her view of the smoke, but it's like she can see through me. I hold her shoulders in place and try again. "Myra, it's just the smoke. The fire smoke, OK? Myra, stop looking at it. Myra…" I say, grabbing at whatever words I can find just so I can keep putting one in front of the other for her like a wall between what she's seeing and what she's imagining. Her fear hits my chest in several dragging points…a claw stabbing through and ripping upward. I wince against it and wonder for a second if I can feel Myra's physical feelings too, or if her fear is just this bad. "Myra, listen. It's smoke. It's just smoke," I repeat, trying to push calm and focus into her.

  Finally, her scream gives way, fractured and grasping until she finds her breath and with it, her voice.

  "It's coming back! It's coming back!" she squeals, the pitch of it so piercing I feel compelled to cover my ears, but I can't risk letting go of her arms.

  "No, nothing is coming. It's from the fire," I repeat, trying to keep my voice level, but it doesn't help. In the next second Liddick is moving behind me into the twirling smoke. I turn in time to see it hit his stomach and bellow out, and Myra stops screaming.

  "See? Just smoke," he says, then kneels and wraps his arms around her when her face crumples again. His brows crash together as her breath catches after a second. She rests her cheek on his shoulder, and her tears finally fall, heavy and hard like the raindrops that ride the thunder down from the sky.

  CHAPTER 40

  After the Rain

  "We should get moving," Dell says after several hours of weather. "There's a break in the rain, and we need to try to make it to the edge of this biome before nightfall. Should be several hours off yet, but we'll have to watch the source."

  "The source of what?" Ellis asks.

  "The source of the light—the gas accumulations overhead. If those start to scatter, it'll get dark quick," Cal answers.

  "So night could be hours off, or it could be any minute? And we're just supposed to start hiking knowing that?" Tieg asks, indignant again.

  "That's why we brought the Cycle stones—they'll help generate light. We don't want red flames here in the open with the vein rock everywhere and threat of lightning, remember?" Cal explains, then sighs when Tieg's expression doesn't change. "Bringing the green flame from the vein rock and the orange from the lightning together with our red flames will mark us—remember Liv's and Rav's Gathering…when they received their Vishan scars?" Tieg shakes his head and looks down his nose at Cal.

  "No, because I was pulling one of your minions off the top of the waterfall about then." Cal narrows his eyes at Tieg, then closes them in a long, tolerant blink after Tieg pushes past him toward the opening of the tree. "What's that buzzing?" Tieg asks.

  "Just be ready to fish out your stone if those flickers start going out," Dell snaps. "They fade altogether, and we'll just have about five minutes before we can't see a foot in front of our faces, wise?" he adds, then turns to the rest of us. "Should be some fallen trees somewhere. We'll need some of that mud to repel the skeets. Keep an eye out."

  "Skeets?" Fraya asks, and Dell takes a patient breath.

  "Mosquitoes," Zoe answers, pulling still wet strands of her copper hair out from the inside of her collar. Fraya smiles, looking relieved until Zoe leans in closer and whispers to her. "No, see, they're about as big as a little brother. Best you should know," she adds with a quick wink, then crosses to help Myra up. Arco and Avis bury the embers of the fire in the middle of the tree hollow, and we all start toward the opening. Just as we're all almost out, Myra jerks her arm from Zoe and shakes her head.

  "We're just going to leave? That's it? That zephyr thing just killed Joss!" Her words hang in the air over everyone like a net we can't escape, and I scramble for something to say to calm her down.

  "It did," Dell answers almost immediately in a quiet, even voice. "And something else will come along for us if we don't hitch up right now."

  Myra's face blanches at his abruptness, and her lower lips starts quivering uncontrollably. Her eyes well up with tears again, and Liddick glares at Dell before moving to Myra's side. He puts his arm around her, but the red flames that suddenly leap from her shoulders startle him back.

  "Myra…we're not going to forget him," Liddick says, and I can feel the same fear in her that he must be trying to address. She looks up at him and pushes her sunny hair from her eyes, then repeats the motion as several long strands stubbornly stick to her cheeks.

  "Like we didn't forget about Pitt? He should be here with us too right now, but what's the last thing anyone has said about him? He and Joss should both be here right now," she says through choking sobs. "But we just move on, right? We just have to keep going! How is that fair!?" she shouts, and I begin to hear the low, menacing buzz that Tieg must have been referencing a few minutes ago.

  "Myra, listen," I say, the words falling into place one after the other before I know what I'll say next, before I realize I'm crossing to her and holding onto her shoulders. "Just listen to that sound…can you hear it? The humming?" I ask.

  Her eyes widen as the flames at her shoulders dip, then leap like a gust of wind has just blown over them.

  "What is that?" she asks in a rattled voice.

  "You knew Joss better than any of us. Ask him what that sound is…what he wants you to do about it. Close your eyes and ask him, Myra, OK? Ask him right now."

  "We don't have time for—" Dell starts with a sigh, and I shoot him a cutting look. He rolls his eyes and holds up a hand dismissively, then turns his back to us and scans upward beyond the threshold of the tree opening.

  "What does he say, Myra?" I ask, gripping her shoulders more tightly as my heart feels like it will crash through my ribs a little more with each hammering beat.

  "That the buzzing is the mosquitoes…like the ones you saw in your vision with Vox," she almost whispers, then erratically giggles through the tears streaming down her face as she continues. "He'd say that Dell should shut his vent…" she smiles, wiping these new tears from her face as she keeps her eyes closed, then sobers. "But that we have to listen to him…that we have to…" she says, her bottom lip quivering again as more tears spill from her eyes. "And that we have to go on."

  My eyes blur with my own tears as she finally looks at me in understanding, the shock slowly fading from the wide, innocent blue of her eyes, which are red-ringed and puffy. Her normally even skin is blotched and smeared with dirt as she tilts her head to the side, nodding in answer to the question I haven't asked…yes, she's ready to go now.

  "OK. And you can ask him what he thinks next time you're afraid, all right? Whenever you need his help…just think about what he would tell you," I say, squeezing her shoulders.

  Myra nods quickly, tears running down her face in rivulets now, and I know her grief has only just begun.

  "I will," she says between sobs, then throws her arms around me, her heartbeat crashing against my chest, or maybe it's both of ours crashing against each other's as her flames dissipate. The bared skin of her shoulder brushes my chin, her jumpsuit and dive suit having burned through, and the low, reverberating hum of the mosquitoes sounds like it could be getting farther away. She meets my eyes one more time with a small smile, then wipes her face again and takes a deep breath. She walks to Fraya, who pulls her in close as they make their way out of the tree and into the green with the others.
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  Liddick lingers a second more, pressing his lips together and lowering his eyes in a subtle nod to me.

  That was brass, Riptide…he thinks, then tucks the beginnings of a smile away before it can surface. You've always been brass…he adds after he turns to follow the others out of the tree, and it feels like he takes the ground I'm standing on with him.

  "That was pretty incredible," Arco says at my back. I turn to face him, feeling like everything in me has been emptied out as I swallow hard and pull in the deepest breath I can.

  "She can't figure out how to let go…maybe we can never let go of the people we lose, Arco," I say, hearing my voice break on his name. He pulls me into a hug, and I fight to keep my composure.

  "Maybe we don't have to…not if we can take them with us like you just taught Myra."

  I nod against his shoulder and push the hair out of my face, then swallow hard again just before we follow the others out of the tree.

  ***

  Nearly a quarter of my Cycle stone has turned from a vivid yellow-green to orange, so I know we've been hiking through this forest for at least a few hours when we finally come upon a fallen tree like the one Vox found in my last message from her. Dell leads us to the edge of the caved-in trunk, which stretches about eight feet out from us and three feet across.

  "Won't need much of the mud, just enough for a coating over any exposed skin," Dell says, which is the first thing anyone has said since we started walking. He pushes back his dark hair, then pulls it the top of it into a ponytail with a scrap of elastic he's torn from the cuff of his sleeve. I had forgotten about the long scar over his forehead, which is usually covered by a wing of feathered brown layers that are falling into his eyes. I remind myself not to stare.

  "Ugh, this smells like rotten fish," Avis announces as he spreads a glob of the green mud over his cheeks and neck.

  "Skeets won't stick you if they think you're rotten fish," Dell answers, slathering a layer of the mud over his neck like he's putting on cologne. Jax smears a finger scoop of mud over Myra's nose, which, after a startled second, finally prompts a small smile from her. It's not much, but the fleeting break in her sadness sends a ripple of warmth over me. After another long pause, she flicks some of the mud back at Jax, who feigns outrage, his normally narrow brown eyes widening as his dark brows shoot up. He wipes the spatter from his face and gives her a devilish look as he scoops an enormous handful of mud from the rotted tree trunk and bounces his eyebrows at her. She swallows a little squeal and tries scrambling to her feet, but only slips and falls forward. She catches herself with her hands, which puts her just inches from Jax and his giant mud pie. His mouth shifts into a silent oh as his brows shoot up again, and he wobbles the mud in his hand in mock threat just under her chin. Without missing a beat, Myra pushes Jax's hand toward him, covering his face and neck.

  Arco laughs out loud, and soon, so does everyone else. Jax wipes the mud from his eyes, then spits to his side.

  "Crite, it tastes like rotten fish too!" he complains, then shakes furiously like a dog, splattering mud flecks on Myra and Fraya, who groan in unison.

  For just an instant, we all come up from under the weight of the shock and loss of the morning, and I'm so distracted by the temporary levity that I don't notice the dull buzz in my ears at first. All sense of relief disappears when the happy scene before me starts to burn away. The buzz in my ears increases, and so does the rate of the decomposition of my surroundings…the green giving way to endless drifts of tan…of sand, and then…of Vox standing on the edge of a deep, sweeping sand funnel, which must be 20 feet wide at the rim.

  I start running toward her, my feet sinking into the sand under my feet as I remind myself that she can't really be here, that I can't really be here because I'm still sitting on the log while we're all putting on mud, aren't I? It doesn't matter because either way, it doesn't stop me from calling out to her.

  "Vox! You made it to the Sand biome! That's what this is, right?" I shout. She turns to me abruptly, her yellow-green eyes blazing with anger as she holds up a bare arm, her dark map-work of tattoos interrupted by streaks of deep, red scratches.

  "It ate my suit!" she yells to me as indignant as I've ever seen her. I'm stunned into stopping as I replay her sentence in my head, trying to understand what she's talking about.

  "What?" I ask, shaking my head.

  "It ate my suit, sand dollar," she overly enunciates, then rifles through her leather pouch and pitches a rock to the bottom of the sand funnel where enormous black pincers lie perfectly still. They must be nearly five feet long! I think, sucking in a gasp, and with it, a mouthful of dust when I notice that there is also a cluster of round, gelatinous sacks, a few of which have burst around a long wooden spike that sticks up from the hairy black…crite…it's a head!

  "What is that!? Where's the rest of it!?" I yell out to her, then bring my hands to my mouth.

  "It's dead! That's what it is!" she snarls, then curses and pitches another rock, this one ricocheting off one of the pincers and rolling to an abrupt stop in the sand. She sits down hard, well away from the edge and digs in her pouch again, this time pulling out a small jar of green paste like the kind the Vishan packed into Jax's eyebrow when he split it open. She starts spreading it over her scratches, and I call to her.

  "Vox?" I say, folding my hands into a megaphone, but she just flips her burgundy hair out of her eyes and continues muttering more curses to herself. "Vox! Did you take the Vishan's tuner—their NET—to talk to me…to show me what's in the Rush?" I call out again.

  Vox stops her slathering and swearing and lowers her chin for what seems like the specific purpose of staring up at me like I'm an idiot.

  "Yeah, I took it," she says, then spits into the giant funnel of sand just beyond her feet. The glob arcs high in the air, then falls almost straight down as she juts her bottom lip out and nods, clearly impressed with herself. "But I don't know how to make it work," she adds, returning her attention to her arm. When she's finished, she packs the little jar back into her bag and gets to her feet, dusting off her legs as she looks at the sky. "I took it that first night with the Vishan because I knew they'd have to send Cal after it. Then you jellies would at least stand a chance of getting past the zephyrs. Have you seen those things?" she asks, suddenly animated as she turns her gaze from the sky back to me, her eyes widening as her forehead wrinkles. I nod slowly, then chew at my bottom lip trying to figure out how to tell her just how well we know about the zephyrs.

  "Vox…" I start, then start over again, still not quite sure how to explain that we've lost two of our friends, let alone that one of them was Joss…the one chink in her armor—the one person she wouldn't admit she felt something for when we were still at Gaia. "Vox, we lost Pitt. He got infected by the spores, and then—"

  "I know," she says abruptly. "I found him after what he did to that manta ray," she adds, then curses again.

  "It wasn't his fault. He couldn't have known it was only trying to reattach his fingers," I say on Pitt's behalf, but she just looks out over the endless sand. I take a deep breath. "And the zephyrs…they took Joss when we were heading for the boundary line," I finally manage, and am surprised when her expression hardens even more.

  "Cal didn't…?" she starts to ask something in a distant voice until her already pale face blanches in understanding. The dark diamond tattoo warps between her eyes as her eyebrows dart in for just a few seconds, and once she realizes this, she tries to force a neutral expression.

  "Cal was with us, and Dell and Zoe. One of the zephyrs just dove close to us, and everyone panicked. We got too spread out…" I explain. Vox sets her jaw and looks back up at the sky.

  "So how are you locking onto me like this?" she asks me, completely pushing aside everything about Joss as she presses a palm to her ear, then sticks her finger in it, and I know she's changing the subject in an effort to lift the heaviness that's starting to suffocate us both. She shakes her head as she studies the clouds overhead. "
Look, can you manage to contact me next time without this head ringing?" she asks with a clip in her voice.

  "I'm not doing it at all," I answer after I swallow the lump in my throat, which just moves like a rock into my chest. "I thought it was you. It has to be you since you have the Vishan's NET." I add, watching her bring her hands to her hips.

  "I don't know. Seems like whenever I see something to warn you about, you just show up," she says, then shrugs. "I thought one of your boyfriends hacked a channel for you or something." She still doesn't look at me, but squints at the clouds and raises a hand to shield her eyes.

  "Yeah, funny…it's just Arco, by the way. What are you looking at?"

  She raises an eyebrow, then angles her head at the strangely lit, stacking clouds above.

  "I have to go," she says. "When they band up like that, it's going to rain. A lot. Then those giant antlion things in the funnels wake up." Vox spits again, gesturing to the dead insect, whose head and pincers are as big as she is. She kicks a wave of sand down over it, then takes a deep breath. "He's really gone?" she asks, looking up at me now for just a second, the diamond between her eyes warping again, but this time, she lets it. I nod slowly a few times, and after a beat, she nods back, pulling in another breath and letting it out like a curtain coming down, the official end to the grief she'll allow herself. She rights her face just before she turns away, and I blink hard against the dust that rises up in the sudden gust of wind. It blows the endless sand over my image of Vox, then from the vines and leaves and trees that appear first in strips, then patches, until they are all I see again.

  CHAPTER 41

  Skeets

  Jax's face is the first I make out, though I have to blink several times before I'm able to recreate the context of why he's covered in dark greenish-brown mud. He meets my eyes and lowers his chin at me as his brow wrinkles.

  "Nice nap? Hurry up with the mud so we can—?" he starts, but interrupts himself after a second more of studying my face. "What's wrong?" he asks, getting to his feet as Liddick sits down hard next to me on the part of the fallen tree that hasn't collapsed.